MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Australian champion mare Winx won the Cox Plate for a record fourth time at Moonee Valley on Saturday to register a 29th-straight victory and extend her record as the most successful flat racer in Group One races.
Confirming her status as Australia's favourite horse, the bay mare came from fifth at the three-quarter mark to scoop the A$3 million ($2.13 million) first prize by two lengths and delight a crowd of some 40,000 at the course.
"The electricity that came through my body when I turned into the home straight just then was something that I guess I only get to feel — but everyone watching, oh I don't know," jockey Hugh Bowman told Channel Seven.
"I'm lost for words."
Her 22nd Group One victory equalled the record of Irish hurdler Hurricane Fly - the now retired gelding who won a similar number of top class races earlier this century.
Phar Lap won the Cox Plate twice in the 1930s and Kingston Town's three successive wins in the early 1980s was the previous record before Winx came along.
($1 = 1.4098 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, editing by Sudipto Ganguly)